My main is near being able to fly a strategic cruiser which can change load out and configuration on the fly.
It's not really on the fly. When you buy the ship you assemble it with the 5 subsystems of your choice. In order to change the subsystems you need to repackage the ship, which will cost you any rigs you have attached to it. They're still awesome ships, though. 
Minmatar use mostly speed and projectile weapons. Some use primarily armor, some shields. Tend to be a bit on the short range side though.
Caldari are the ones I'm most familiar with as they're the ones I used. They aren't the big drone users. Caldari use missiles with a side of railguns. Lots of range on most ships. They're real big on shields.
Gallente are the drone users and also use blasters. They prefer armor. Good range on drones, bad on blasters.
I'll expand on this.
Quick EVE fitting primer so this makes sense - each ship has 3 "racks" where modules are fitted. High - has weapons and other weapon-like emitters/utilities (remote repair, energy drain, etc). Medium - has shield tanking modules, afterburners/microwarpdrives (ABs on steroids), and Electronic Warfare modules. Low - has armor tanking modules, maneuverability modules (overdrives, hull mods), damage increasing modules. There are general, there are odds and ends here and there.
Each weapon type has a short and long range variant. For lasers, Pulse laser = short, Beam = long. For projectiles, Autocannon = short, Artillery = long. For missiles, Assault = short, Normal = long (normals don't have a special name, the assault launchers are just named such), for battleship-sized, Torpedoes = short, Cruise Missiles = long. For magnetic, Blasters = short, Railgun = long.
Minmatar ships are more agile and generally speedier. They have some of the fastest ships of all 3 races. Most of their ships use projectiles (auto-cannons or huge howitzer artillery, high alpha strike but very long reload). Some of their ships use a combination of projectiles and missiles. In general, most Minmatar pilots prefer Autocannons for their DPS. Artillery is only really used for extreme range sniping. They are fairly even on armor/shields, and most of their ships can be fitted to tank on either shields or armor (very similar number of mid and low fitting slots). Shield tanking is preferred only because armor tanking uses low slots which are very precious for boosting a ship's damage output and maneuverability.
Caldari are exclusively shield tankers and basically missile boats. The majority of their ships are only used with missiles, and most of their railgun ships are not used. The Rokh battleship is a notable exception as it gets very good range and useful in PvP Fleet battles.
Gallente ships are exclusively armor tankers. They are generally hybrid drone/railgun boats. They have some of the biggest drone bays, and some of their ships have bonuses to drone damage and health. They tend to be pretty durable. Most Gallente pilots in PvE use drone boats, drones are not used much in fleet PvP by battleships, so other Gallente ships are taken.
Drones can be swapped for stikecraft with and placed on ships with hangars. Drones can also use abilities.
One thing to note is that the capital Carriers and Supercarriers in EVE get special drones, which are bigger and badder. Carriers can use Fighters which are cruiser-sized drones that deal a lot of damage and can warp around the system (normal drones have an operational range of just about 50km around the ship without extensions). Supercarriers can also use Bombers, which do even more damage. I don't know how much use you'll be able to make of this since in Sins you can't allow a squadron to jump out of the grav well to simulate the Fighter/Bomber warping, but maybe you could use a speed-like ability on them to simulate being able to go farther faster.
